In a not-too-surprising analysis of it’s user base, TradePub.com reports that 71% of its iOS app users have a title of “Manager” or greater in their organizations. According to an article in Apple Support News, TradePub indicates that …

“In addition to the 71 percent of iPad users (drawn from TradePub’s 30,000-strong installed base) who were at least managers, 48 percent represented the level of “Director” or above.”

In case you’re not familiar with it, TradePub.com is an online resource center for high-quality white papers and ebooks that can be downloaded for free. They also have apps for popular smart phones as well as iPad. The web interface (TradePub.com) provides a helpful search system and a navigation tree based on industries and categories.

And good reporting by Apple Support News took the words right out of my mouth – the data is likely skewed because of the audience.

While TradePub’s audience may skew toward higher-level employees because of the nature of its content (it offers trade magazine and technical support documentation downloads), this does back up previous reports that the iPad is generally seeing a top-down adoption pattern in general.

But this slight bias aside, TradePub’s observations are simply more firewood on an already blazing trend – iPad is killin’ it in the executive suit. I attended a local business execs meeting this morning; a collection of about 16 local business owners. Last month none had an ipad except me. Today 25% of the group (not including me) showed up with iPads.

In March of this year I reported in a related story that 91 percent of managers who were using iPad, said they believe the tablet increased their productivity. And just last week, a client asked me for a list of the top 7 things her executives could do to achieve hyper-productivity with iPad. And this little post (Three Reasons the iPad Works for Executives) drives home the undeniable portability and agility factors that aide in making an executive more effective.

Indeed, iPad is moving into the executive suite with swiftness and great promise and for what it’s worth, TradePub’s new iPad app is making it easier for executives to tap into a variety of resources directly from their iPad.

TradePub for iPad, A Mobile Executive Library

TradePub for iPad, is a just-in-time knowledge solution. One of the things we focus on here at iPadCTO is how iPad can transform knowledge management outcomes. Whether it’s a PDF reading and management app, or capturing and annotating web artifacts, those of us who establish best practices concerning information access, tend to increase work performance.

Like many aspects of digital life, when we plan how to deal with information nuggets, we are better informed, we tend to make better decisions, and we typically develop much greater insight which often leads to innovation and creativity. Unfortunately, few of us have the time or perhaps the skills to plan and craft good approaches that streamline our personal and business management knowledge.

I’ve used the web version for a while and found excellent value in the documents and papers I’ve downloaded. While just about everything they have is available elsewhere on the web, including my own ebooks and white papers, it’s nice to use a single go-to-resource to whittle down the possibilities. Because I typically consume technical and trade documents while away from the office, I was particularly pleased to learn they had an iPad app.

Still in its first iteration, the iPad version is functional and not a bad initial release. Plus, like everything at TradePub, the app is free – definitely worth looking at (available in the iTunes App Store.